Keyblade Master

Nomura has such weird ideas about UIs before reality interferes. Why in the world are the Command menu and the status display skewed to look like you're seeing them from the inside of an AR-augmented helmet? It's not like it's a first-person game. >_>;

Meh don't really seem to have much of an issue with it, I'm guessing it's to make the other gauges like Limit, and ATB more visible or something. I mean having them be parallel can get confusing on the eyes for some people since the battle system is going to be 3 party combat. So instead of stacking them on top of each other, which would probably take up a lot of the screen, they decided to angle them a little bit.

SeeD A-Class

Meh don't really seem to have much of an issue with it, I'm guessing it's to make the other gauges like Limit, and ATB more visible or something. I mean having them be parallel can get confusing on the eyes for some people since the battle system is going to be 3 party combat. So instead of stacking them on top of each other, which would probably take up a lot of the screen, they decided to angle them a little bit.

Pretty much every menu-based system out there has menu options written straight across rather than at an angle. KH has done that for years. There's nothing confusing about it, and it takes up no less space (even if the space in which it exists is slightly different).

Anyway, I'm at a loss as to why you're trying to argue this in the first place. You're not even defending a final product, just prototype weirdness that's liable to change before release. o_0;

Keyblade Master

Pretty much every menu-based system out there has menu options written straight across rather than at an angle. KH has done that for years. There's nothing confusing about it, and it takes up no less space (even if the space in which it exists is slightly different).

Anyway, I'm at a loss as to why you're trying to argue this in the first place. You're not even defending a final product, just prototype weirdness that's liable to change before release. o_0;

Well Kingdom Hearts only has one character you play as, this is going to have multiple characters you play as that you freely switch between, I'm just trying to explain why I think why they would do this.

I think the angular way it was done was for separation purposes, as well as give the player all the information they need like for example if your playing as Cloud, and your waiting for Barret's ATB bar to fill, you can see his bar filling up, and switch to him much easier if they are angular than stacked on top of one another in parallel with the command menu like Kingdom Hearts, because they won't blur together, or take up a big portion of the screen.

Even though I'm really concerned about that third character though, I'm guessing they will just move it upward.

Well Luminous was giving them engine issues, I'm glad they ditched it, rather them work on the gameplay, and story then have to worry about engines messing their game up. It also allows them to get the game out before 2020

Yeah... They made massive improvements between the first UE4 showings of those characters and what we ended up getting, but it hurts that we're no longer getting modified Visual Works models for the main characters.

Well Luminous was giving them engine issues, I'm glad they ditched it, rather them work on the gameplay, and story then have to worry about engines messing their game up. It also allows them to get the game out before 2020

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why it was done from a business perspective. But I feel like UE4's been something of a disaster on a creative level and I hope that they'll continue to put in the work necessary to use Luminous as a company-wide tool instead of doubling down on the licensing thing to save R&D costs. >_>;

I absolutely do not want to see FFXVI announced as a UE4 game. That'd be the worst. =(

SOLDIER Second Class

Next to the ATB bar, it says one Triangle action remaining (there is also one triangle remaining). This might be more in line with the FFXV tech bar, just renamed to ATB to activate special attacks by pressing triangle.

Keyblade Master

Yeah... They made massive improvements between the first UE4 showings of those characters and what we ended up getting, but it hurts that we're no longer getting modified Visual Works models for the main characters.

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why it was done from a business perspective. But I feel like UE4's been something of a disaster on a creative level and I hope that they'll continue to put in the work necessary to use Luminous as a company-wide tool instead of doubling down on the licensing thing to save R&D costs. >_>;

I absolutely do not want to see FFXVI announced as a UE4 game. That'd be the worst. =(

I actually hope that FFXVI uses Unreal, I don't think that UE4 has affected them creatively in the slightest, I mean KH3's graphics look like what you would find in a current gen Kingdom Hearts title, and the FF7 Remake it looks fine a bit of graphic polish needed, but honestly if the game runs fine, and plays good then they can through Luminous Engine in the trash can and forget it ever existed. I honestly don't see how it affected them creatively, hell FFXV shows the opposite, the game had time constraint issues, hell that's probably why you have fully made things in the game with collision, hell some even with enemies in them which is insane.

If Final Fantasy XVI is an Unreal Engine 4 game or better yet an Unreal Engine 5 game, I wouldn't care, if the boss fights are great, fun and has some challenge to it, the combat is full of depth, and plays like amazing(I'm hoping for an action RPG), a story without holes, full of life, complexities, depth, and is fleshed out? then I don't give a shit, and graphics comparable to the FF7 Remake? Then I don't give a shit. I'd rather have a game with all this than one that looks pretty and fails on some of these levels. FFXVI will most likely appear on Steam anyway, so the graphics are modable. story, and gameplay however are not. Also for the consoles I'd rather have a game that takes a slight dip in graphical quality, and run at a locked, and constant 30FPS, than one that has bad framepacing issues, with a FPS that goes from 24-30FPS. It would also allow them to work on multiple mainlines at a time, or at least multiple games at a time.

AVALANCHE Warrior

I actually hope that FFXVI uses Unreal, I don't think that UE4 has affected them creatively in the slightest, I mean KH3's graphics look like what you would find in a current gen Kingdom Hearts title, and the FF7 Remake it looks fine a bit of graphic polish needed, but honestly if the game runs fine, and plays good then they can through Luminous Engine in the trash can and forget it ever existed.

Yeah, to say jumping from Luminous to UE4 "hurt them creatively" is a pretty bold statement to make given the only things to go off of is FFXV (which is a special case), and some screenshots of KH3 and VII remake.
I, personally, would prefer to see Luminous become their in-house engine though, going completely 3rd party is out of character for Squeenix, and seems to be merely a circumstance of getting KH3 and VII remake out sooner.

Luminous' problems w/ FFXV aren't really a problem because of the engine itself, but them having to build it and work on FFXV at the same time. That's not an issue anymore, so they definitely have the capacity to refine the engine to run optimally, and create a game within the proper limitations of the engine that doesn't lead to the ridiculous complications like FFXV had.

Keyblade Master

Yeah, to say jumping from Luminous to UE4 "hurt them creatively" is a pretty bold statement to make given the only things to go off of is FFXV (which is a special case), and some screenshots of KH3 and VII remake.
I, personally, would prefer to see Luminous become their in-house engine though, going completely 3rd party is out of character for Squeenix, and seems to be merely a circumstance of getting KH3 and VII remake out sooner.

Luminous' problems w/ FFXV aren't really a problem because of the engine itself, but them having to build it and work on FFXV at the same time. That's not an issue anymore, so they definitely have the capacity to refine the engine to run optimally, and create a game within the proper limitations of the engine that doesn't lead to the ridiculous complications like FFXV had.

Honestly I have no preferences for the engine they use, I just want them to focus on the parts of Final Fantasy XVI that really matter which is gameplay and story, if the graphics look great Unreal Engine 5 or Luminous Studios Pro. FFXVI will most likely appear on Steam, so the graphics are improvable with mods, and system settings. I just want them to get the base game right, and improve on the graphics later, and it seems like Unreal Engine is the only way for them to do that efficiently, it also seems to be the only way to get multiple titles at once, as opposed to one.

SeeD A-Class

I actually hope that FFXVI uses Unreal, I don't think that UE4 has affected them creatively in the slightest, I mean KH3's graphics look like what you would find in a current gen Kingdom Hearts title, and the FF7 Remake it looks fine a bit of graphic polish needed, but honestly if the game runs fine, and plays good then they can through Luminous Engine in the trash can and forget it ever existed. I honestly don't see how it affected them creatively, hell FFXV shows the opposite, the game had time constraint issues, hell that's probably why you have fully made things in the game with collision, hell some even with enemies in them which is insane.

If Final Fantasy XVI is an Unreal Engine 4 game or better yet an Unreal Engine 5 game, I wouldn't care, if the boss fights are great, fun and has some challenge to it, the combat is full of depth, and plays like amazing(I'm hoping for an action RPG), a story without holes, full of life, complexities, depth, and is fleshed out? then I don't give a shit, and graphics comparable to the FF7 Remake? Then I don't give a shit. I'd rather have a game with all this than one that looks pretty and fails on some of these levels. FFXVI will most likely appear on Steam anyway, so the graphics are modable. story, and gameplay however are not. Also for the consoles I'd rather have a game that takes a slight dip in graphical quality, and run at a locked, and constant 30FPS, than one that has bad framepacing issues, with a FPS that goes from 24-30FPS. It would also allow them to work on multiple mainlines at a time, or at least multiple games at a time.

If you don't think there's a problem with the way KHIII and FFVIIR look, there's no way I'm going to convince you that UE4 is a problem. Suffice it to say, I do think there's a problem with the way they look. I think KHIII's graphics only "look like what you would find in a current gen Kingdom Hearts title" insofar as there's nothing current-gen to compare it to outside of itself; the character models in particular look poly-starved, more in line with (first-party) Wii U games than Squenix's PS4 output. And both KHIII and FFVIIR, unfortunately, suffer from "stock UE4 syndrome," which makes them feel more like amateur UE4 remake projects than full-priced Squenix games ever should.

In other words, modding is a terrible solution in this particular case, because the crux of the problem is that it looks like a fan mod in the first place. =P

As common as it is to pretend that trade-offs must inevitably be made between graphics, story, and gameplay, that's not meaningfully true. Different people tend to work on those elements of a game, and if one is bad, reducing one of the other two is unlikely to improve it. Reducing the graphics wouldn't make a game with a bad story and/or bad gameplay better. It'd just result in a game with bad story, bad gameplay, and bad graphics. =P

As for frame rate and frame pacing, UE4 didn't really do much for KH 0.2 in that regard, so I'm not sure why you're assuming that it'll give you what you're looking for. DigitalFoundry's analysis shows that it's got the exact same sort of frame rate/frame pacing issues as FFXV does in spite of the big dip in graphical quality... and it's handling fewer hero characters on screen than KHIII will need to handle.

Even working on multiple titles simultaneously isn't UE4 specific. Squenix is structured such that there will always be multiple teams; the only thing that needs to be done to allow for multiple teams working on Luminous titles is for the Luminous team to be freed up to train/support them.

Yeah, to say jumping from Luminous to UE4 "hurt them creatively" is a pretty bold statement to make given the only things to go off of is FFXV (which is a special case), and some screenshots of KH3 and VII remake.

FFXV isn't the only point of reference we have for Luminous. FFXIV uses a branch (optimized for many character models and lower base hardware), and while its graphical performance isn't anywhere close to FFXV's, it steers just as far clear of the stock UE4 look as FFXV does. The Luminous tech demos -- Agni's Philosophy and Cry -- might not be full games, but they demonstrate the same "scaled-down VisualWorks" look as FFXV itself.

As for KHIII and VIIR, we might not have other Square-part-of-Squenix UE4 games to include in a comparison, but we don't really need to, because it's obvious on even a cursory look that most of those games' issues are shared with UE4 games that use the stock settings (like all those fan-made "HD remake" projects out there).

Warrior of Light

I think KHIII's graphics only "look like what you would find in a current gen Kingdom Hearts title" insofar as there's nothing current-gen to compare it to outside of itself; the character models in particular look poly-starved, more in line with (first-party) Wii U games than Squenix's PS4 output.